Various Beethoven - Pathetique/Moonlight CD

Legendary Russian pianist, Valery Afanassiev, who turns 70 this year and the winner of 1972 Queen Elizabeth Competition, has been known to connoisseurs for his deeply philosophical interpretation with perfect grip of the instrument, as an modern authentic successor of long tradition of the so-called Russian piano school.     This is Afanassiev’s first recording for Sony Classical label, featuring three most popular piano sonatas by Beethoven. Afanassiev favoUrs the last three sonatas of Beethoven, and has performed and recorded them several times to critical acclaim, but these popular, name-sonatas are very first in his long career.   With measured rendition stretching over 75 minutes of these three sonatas (normal pianist could add one more sonata for this duration), Afanassiev exploits the hidden detail of these over-played and over-recorded pieces.    Recorded in February 2015 at Beethovensaal in Hannover (where the famous DG Beethoven sonata cycle by Wilhelm Kempff was produced in 1960s), these three sonatas are the first session recording for Afanassiev since his well-known and widely-distributed DENON recordings in 1990s (His recordings after 2000 have been mostly live recordings).